Monthly Archives: December 2010

Posted onDecember 9, 2010|Comments Off on Falling off the Dot; Observations of the Squiggle

I am not sure where this morning’s start will take me. Life seems hard to jump-start when I have things on my plate, today it’s the “Parent Coffee and Conversation” at the school (not sure if I care to go, though I feel like I should), and then afterward, it’s going to be the Atheist “Annual Christmachanukwanzakah/Festivus Gathering dinner…. Yesterday it was a dentist appointment. Monday it was a migraine.

I find a lot of excuses to “not-write”. Odd that I can find time to play a video game… (Well, actually, I made time for that that including file comparisons, etc. And in its own way, my Neverwinter Nights playing is writing related. I do want to design and write a module of my own. I got as far as one page of stuff then stopped; I felt overwhelmed and completely alone in the universe. The nifty website I’d found that had been dedicated to beginner scripting vanished just a few weeks ago [they were never complete anyway], the same way that book I’d seen once upon a miracle ago in CompUSA vanished one week after I saw it and didn’t have the cash on hand to buy it. BLEGH!)

As for my perpetual (it seems) gameplay: it doesn’t look like I can actually access those parts of the game in NWN:HoU I know exist (I checked all the module info and there are several sections in Waterdeep, as well as several conversations that are in the module files but not active in game play), but how to actually access that part of the game? No clue, and they annoy me as much as that damned crypt in the Chapter 2 that I could never open! I may not even want to go wherever that door might lead, but damn it, I want to at least know I CAN get there if I wanted to.

Maybe I need to learn to code a bit to get into that region. I thought it was an area for specific player classes, and even created a paladin character to try getting there. No dice so far. And truth be told, I don’t like the idea of playing a paladin …as per my other note, I’m a bit put off by the zealot that hands out inside me.

Someone has probably answered this question in the Bioware community pages, and when I remember my login info, I will probably hightail it down there one of these days and check. I’m still dredging my way through some of the beginning scripting info I did gather up. (I stopped learning how to code too soon it seems, but really, I don’t want to become a coder again. Never did. I like and appreciate that world and the skill required to be good in it, but I guess that sometimes I’m still too much of a squiggle and not enough of a line.)

A rebel without a clue…. I think most rebels are actually. To rebel and balk at the system without trying to alter it to suit ones needs is the dictionary definition of cluelessness This isn’t to say that people can’t and shouldn’t oppose systems and actions they disapprove of, but to just fight and fight…. There are very few systems that don’t have built in defenses for such behavior. The dissident becomes the madman or the lunatic fringe (as horrible as I though the later Matrix movies were, I think Zion was a perfect example of this sort of thing). The real change never seems to come from the one who is screaming “You can’t make me!” It comes from the ones that don’t do it….either they forget a day and nothing bad happens, or they see the bad things that happen and realize that they can stop those…

Enh, not sure where my mind is gone again. The sun is now shining on this spot in the Panera, making the screen hard to see. The very handsome man who does there deliveries was in (and gone now, I’m afraid, and I only caught a glimpse of him)… Too distracted for reall thought. Too distracted is a good example of how I go through life in general. I suspect most of us are in that boat: too distracted to really see what is happening around us. The crime, if there is one, is that we let ourselves be put off so easily. And when we do pay attention, in those sound-byte minutes between each sparkling smile and soft voice on the screen, it’s only because the bad things that have been happening for years suddenly hit us. It isn’t because we made the choice to notice. We had to be forced to notice our own needs.

We’re that distracted, that off focus.

A small moment of joy, a smile and a passing word…refilling my tea cup and getting to see the delivery man. Russian I think and just a nice guy, even if I ony find him attractive because he reminds me of ‘Listii, attractive in that dangerous and mysterious way. Which of course is probably hilarious to the extreme. Then again, I can equally see him a family man, a recent immigrant who is just trying to support himself and his family.

Of course I see ‘Listii that way as well.

Maybe the distractions are not all that bad. I find a lot of characters in my distractions….